Featured Post

Kickstart 1H11 – Pre Registration Open

After the successfull organization of Kickstart 2H10, we will be organizing the Kickstart 1H11 event on the 8th and 9th of April 2011, where we will select the companies that will receive investment from SeedCapital during the 1st half of 2011 (thus 1H11).
The previous Kickstart round went pretty well,...

About

Maverick is my personal holding and investment company. I’m an investor in the SeedCapital seed & startup fund, which I also help manage (as the Entrepreneur in Residence).

Through Maverick I intend to contribute to a more entrepreneurial country (Portugal) by investing directly in companies, by helping entrepreneurs and startups achieve their dreams and by contributing knowledge and experience in available spaces (blogs like this one, events, schools, meetings, etc).

I also intend to pursue the study of entrepreneurship in a PhD and try to teach entrepreneurship classes at Portuguese universities. If no one takes me up on that, I’ll create my own University.

Why Maverick?

Well someone, a long time ago, when confronted with my “rock the boat and damn the torpedoes” attitude, said “You’re a real maverick!” (non-portuguese guy). I didnt know what that was so I went and checked. It seems that those cowboys (namely Samuel Maverick) who didnt brand their cattle with hot irons (so as to be able to steal other cowboy’s cattle) were called “maverick”. The term was extended to be use as a way to refer to an unbranded range animal. Which pretty well fits me: I never got branded with the corporate irons (aside from a stint in Public Administration).

But its more than that: as you probably checked out in the links above, the term “maverick” was further extended and is now used to refer to:

"It's not always easy to do the right thing. But, doing the right thing makes you strong, it builds character, it forces you to make decisions based upon your beliefs and not what other people think. In life, and in business, you have to stand for what you believe in and sometimes you have to stand alone. But, what makes you a leader is having the courage of your convictions."Queen Latifah